Of Garden Snails and Motor Cars

Garden Snail (SA/2022)

 

What chance have snails upon an asphalt road

When giant SUVs go roaring by? [1] 

 

 

I assume my neighbour loves his wife and children; but I know for a fact he loves his sleek and (to my eyes) sinister looking Sports Utility Vehicle parked proudly in front of his house on what was once a garden full of wild plants, before being concreted over. 

 

And I know this not only because I have seen the way he cares for the car, but heard the way he boasts of its special features, including optimal traction, enhanced connectvity, and a fuel-injected engine (terms which mean absolutely nothing to me). 

 

He's right, of course, when he says it's a marvel of automotive engineering, but I can't help thinking: So what? 

 

The design, development, and manufacturing of motor cars is not something that interests or excites my imagination - certainly not in the way that the snails creeping about in the dampness of my garden after the rain, fascinate and enchant. 

 

For if, as my neighbour insists, his SUV is a marvel of engineering and technology, then a snail is a wonder of evolution, first moving on to land about 350 million years ago. The former may be able to crush the latter under its alloy wheels, but when it comes to possessing special features, Cornu asperum [2] leaves even the most advanced automobile in the dust. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm paraphrasing Harry Crosby, who opens his poem 'The Golden Gourd' with the following lines: "What chance have snakes upon an asphalt road / When giant limousines go gliding by,". The poem can be found in Ladders to the Sun, (Soul Bay Press Ltd., 2013), p. 38. 

 

[2] The scientific name of the common garden snail is subject to intense debate amongst malacologists; although classified as Helix aspersa for over two centuries, the prevailing wisdom now places it in the genus Cornu. Whatever we call it, this terrestrial mollusc - originally native to the Mediterranean region - now dwells happily in several parts of the world. In fact, the only place you are unlikely to find one, is Antarctica.  

 

For an earlier post in which I reflect favourably on the snail, click here. 

 

 

Guards! D. H. Lawrence and the Potency of Men

Guards erect with breasts bright red 

and the skins of bears upon their head

All the nice girls love a sailor, so they say [1].

 

But for D. H. Lawrence, it's all the king's soldiers who catch his eye; especially those guards marching stiffly in red tunics and black busbies in whom phallic pride and sun glory is manifest in equal measure. 

 

This is made clear in the early poem 'Guards' [2], where he writes of smouldering soldiers with dark eyes and closed warm lips who advance upon him in a soft-impulsive but somewhat threatening manner, like a wave, before then turning, leaving him to admire their burning shoulders in retreat. 

 

The encounter is clearly, for Lawrence, one with homoerotic overtones. I don't agree with everything that Gregory Woods writes, but it's hard to argue with his claim that in the section of 'Guards' entitled 'Evolution of Soldiers', "their apparent evolution is similar to that of a penis, through tumescence and detumescence" [3]. 

 

Expanding on his theme, Woods continues:

 

"Perspective causes each man to seem to grow as he approaches with red tunic, black busby and 'dark threats'. He passes 'above us', in the classic position of sexual advantage. At 'ebb-time', when the group has just passed by, its phalluses remain erect for a glorious moment, before subsiding." [4]  

 

 

II. 

 

Almost twenty years later, and Lawrence is still thinking of the soldiers in Hyde Park he saw in the summer of 1909. 

 

In a letter sent to Harry Crosby in 1928, he encloses an extended version of 'Guards' - one with an unpublished third section which describes the soldiers as a "column of flesh erect and painted vermillion" and as "Sun-dipped men [...] all blood-potent", who have come together in their maleness [5].

                   

Again, you don't need to be an expert in queer studies to appreciate that this verse is invested with erotic desire for the male body: "And the male body is the symbol of its own sexual focus, the phallus." [6] 

 

Thus, whilst there is "no questioning the fact that his art is primarily hetero-erotic in intention" [7], Lawrence also loves daydreaming about the potency of men and phallic heroes dipped in scarlet.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] "Ship Ahoy! (All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor)" is an English music hall song from 1908, written by Bennett Scott and A. J. Mills. The song was first performed by male impersonator Hetty King.  

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Guards!', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 34-35. 

      As Pollnitz notes: "DHL regularly visited Hyde Park, in central London. He planned to take Louie Burrows there in July 1909 as he had Jessie Chambers on an earlier visit [...]." See The Poems, Vol. II, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press 2013), p. 843. Whether either young woman was particularly interested in seeing soldiers on parade, I don't know, but Lawrence adored the spectacle of erect young men in uniform marching past.   

 

[3] Gregory Woods, Articulate Male Flesh: Male Homo-eroticism and Modern Poetry, (Yale University Press, 1987), p. 130.  

 

[4] Ibid.  

[5] See Lawrence's letter to Harry Crosby [30 April - 1 May 1928], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton, with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 388-390. The third part of 'Guards' is entitled 'Potency of Men' and consists of five rhyming quatrains. It is reproduced in full on pp. 388-89 from Lawrence's MS.  

[6] Gregory Woods, Articulate Male Flesh, pp. 130-31. 

[7] Ibid., p. 137. 

 

 

To read a sister post to this one, on Lawrence's extended version of the poem 'Gipsy' contained in the Crosby letter, click here. 

Little Weed Vs Havering Council

Bill and Ben, the Flower Pot Men, with their female friend Little Weed 

To watch a short clip of this BBC TV classic - with or without your mother - click here

 

 

I. 

 

In a very real sense, I belong to what might be termed the Watch with Mother generation (i.e., those whose televisual imagination was formed during the black and white days of the 1950s and 60s). And I remain grateful still to Freda Lingstrom and Maria Bird for the programmes they created; some of my happiest (and earliest) memories are of Andy Pandy, The Woodentops, and the Flower Pot Men. 

 

So it's entirely possible, then, that my love for wild plants is a result of my pre-school fascination with Little Weed, who used to feature (and grow) alongside Bill and Ben in the last of these shows; of indeterminate species, but with a lovely smiling face.

 

 

II.

 

According to a statement on the Havering Council website, the spraying of (the possibly carcinogenic) weed killer glyphosate across the borough in every crack and crevice, is justified because alternative measures have been deemed ineffective and more expensive, and necessary because weeds "growing between paving slabs or along the edge of the road visually impact on an area and  [...] cause damage to property".

 

Thus, from March through to November, "steps are taken to remove weeds and prevent growth". 

 

Although this includes some manual suppression (i.e. the pulling up of weeds by hand, or cutting them with a strimmer), mostly this involves the herbicidal spraying of public highways and footpaths by a subcontracted private company (SH Goss) four times a year, who cheerfully boast of their long experience in maintenance of the environment via the killing of wild plants.     

 

 

III.

 

I'm sure there are other residents who are unhappy about this - if only because they are concerned about the health implications for themselves, their children, and their pets. 

 

But mostly, I suspect the residents of Havering are happy to see little green weeds and colourful wild flowers pulled up or poisoned. Indeed, I watch my neighbours regularly conducting chemical warfare and utilising high pressured pumps in order to protect their driveways from the unwanted intrusion of life. 

       

However, as I've said many times before on Torpedo the Ark, whilst brute force crushes many little plants, they always rise again and, ultimately, "the pyramids will not last a moment, compared with the daisy".*

  

 

Before and after pics taken in the roadside outside my house

 

* D. H. Lawrence, Sketches of Etruscan Places, in Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays, ed. Simonetta De Filippis, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 36.

 

 

See also: 

 

'In Defence of Weeds and Wildflowers' (25 June 2015): click here.

 

'And No Birds Sing' (28 May 2016): click here. 

 

'And Fungal Life Shall Triumph'  (8 Nov 2021): click here. 

 

 

Between Thy Moon-Lit, Milk-White Thighs

Diagrammatic, non-explicit, depiction of a man

performing cunnilingus on a woman

wikimedia.org

 

 

In the spring of 1928, D. H. Lawrence sent Harry Crosby the newly written out and revised MS for his short story 'Sun' [1], by way of thanking Crosby for the five gold coins that the latter had sent him. 

 

Lawrence also enclosed some poems, including an extended version of an early work entitled 'Gipsy' [2]. To the original two stanzas, Lawrence now added a couple more, which contained, he said, a bit of sun. 

 

The first of these reads:

 

Between thy moon-lit, milk-white thighs

      Is a moon-pool in thee.

And the sun in me is thirsty, it cries

      To drink thee, to win thee. [3]   

 

This is certainly an interesting quatrain; one which lends support to the controversial claim that although Lawrence thinks of the female sex organ as a ripe, bursting fruit just waiting to be eaten, the cunt was for him at its most succulent only when "overflowing with semen from the withdrawn phallus" [4].

 

Whether this implies that cunnilingus was, in Lawrence's erotic imagination, a disguised form of fellatio [5], is probably not something we can say for sure. 

 

But what we might note is that via the creampie-loving figure of Oliver Mellors, Lawrence forcefully expressed the view that there is only one place in which it is legitimate and desirable for the male to ejaculate - and that is deep inside the vagina [6]. 

 

Thus, when in the verse above the male speaker uses the term moon-pool, I think we all know that he refers to a deposit of semen and it is this which he wishes to felch from between the milk-white thighs of his beloved; i.e., the sun in him is greedy for the male seed of life, not the female sap that curdles milk and "smells strange on your fingers" [7].  

 

 

Notes

 

 [1] See the letter to Harry Crosby [29 April - 1 May 1928], in The Letters of D. H. Lawence Vol. VI, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton, with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 388-90. 

      This MS would provide the base text for the Black Sun edition of the tale published in October 1928.

 

[2] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Gipsy', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 14-15. And for an earlier version of this poem entitled 'Self-Contempt', see the letter to Louie Burrows (6 Dec 1910) in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 196.   

[3] Letters VI. 389. The second added stanza reads: "I am black with the sun, and willing / To be dead / Can I but plunge in thee, swilling / Thy waves over my head."

[4] Gregory Woods, Articulate Flesh: Male Homo-eroticism and Modern Poetry, (Yale University Press, 1987), p. 131. 

      This is taken from a chapter on Lawrence - chapter four (pp. 125-139) - in which Woods argues (amongst other things) that Lawrence had a "deep and obvious fascination with male homosexuality" and that whilst his "main erotic preoccupation is with the possibility of love between a woman and a man", when this seems impossible or doomed to failure, "he turns to the homosexual alternative [...] as a less problematical version of the same thing". 

      Ultimately, says Woods, Lawrence is promoting a bisexual ideal and his erotic grail is the "passionate, physical union of two heterosexual men". 

      Lines quoted can be found on p. 125.   

 

[5] Woods writes: "Cunnilingus is Lawrence's oblique image of fellatio." Articulate Flesh, p. 131. 

      A little later (p. 132), Woods insists that Lawrence's heroes all long to drink from the cup of semen which is the post-coital (spunk-filled) vagina. The American biographer and critic Jeffry Meyers, who has written extensively on Lawrence and published a volume entitled Homosexuality and Literature, 1890-1930 (The Athlone Press, 1977), is not convinced, however, and says that statements such as this, made without supporting evidence, simply reveal the author's own obsessions. 

      Meyers's review of Articulate Flesh can be found in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 88, No. 1 (Jan 1989), pp. 126-129. This can conveniently be accessed on JSTOR via the following link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27710124  

 

[6] See D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 203. 

      Speaking to Connie, Mellors angrily condemns those women who "'love everything, every kind of feeling and cuddling and going off, every kind except the natural one.'" Such women, he says, even when they do allow vaginal penetration, invariably insist their lovers withdraw prior to orgasm and come instead on some external body part. To be fair, the women are the ones running the risk of an unwanted preganancy - not something that Oliver Mellors allows himself to consider.      

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'Fig', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 233.

      Again, whether this means that Lawrence imagined cunnilingus as an oblique image of fellatio - or whether, rather, he had a neo-primitive belief that the ingestion of semen increased one's own potency thanks to the magical properties it possessed - is not something I know for certain (any Lawrence scholar reading this who may care to advise is welcome to do so). 

      Readers interested in knowing more about the swallowing of semen might find the post entitled 'Gokkun' (7 May 2016) of interest: click here. 

 

 

A note on further reading: 

 

Those interested in this topic might like to see the essay by Isabella Rooke-Ley entitled '"What is Cunt? she said": Obscenity, Concealment and Representations of the Vulva in D. H. Lawrence', in Polyphony, Volume 2, Issue 1 (University of Manchester, April 2020): click here.  

      Rooke-Ley argues that Lawrence's use of the word cunt in Lady C. is not what it seems, in that rather than being a direct (if vulgar) reference to female genitalia, it is in fact a concealment of the latter and linked to the text's figuring of the cunt and its pleasure as obscene and shameful.

      Turning her attention to the (infamous) poem 'Fig', Rooke-Ley attempts to demonstrate how there is also a link made in Lawrence's work between concealment, obscenity, vulval pleasure, and putrefaction.

      Finally, readers may also wish to see my post 'The Obscene Beyond: It is So Lovely Within the Crack' (1 July 2021): click here.

 

 

For a sister post to this one, on Lawrence's extended version of the poem 'Guards' contained in the Crosby letter, click here.                 

 

 

Would You Fuck a Queen Bee?

Joanna Frank as Regina in 

The Outer Limits (1964)

 

 

I. 

 

Amongst social insects, such as ants, wasps, and honey bees, a member of the reproductive female caste destined to become a queen is known as a gyne. Such a privileged bee is selected at the larval stage and fed a diet consisting exclusively of royal jelly; a protein-rich secretion which ensures her sexual maturity [1]. 

 

Raised in a specially constructed royal chamber, she will emerge as a virgin queen, bigger in size than a worker, but smaller than a queen in her prime. Her initial desire is not to fuck as many drones as possible, but, rather, to seek out and kill any potential love rivals; i.e., any other virgin queens, be they newly emergent like her, or still developing in their cells [2].     

 

Once she has established herself as top bee, the new queen will fly out on the first warm sunny day to a congregation area, where she will accept the attention of her admirers and mate with a dozen or more drones; male bees who exist only to sexually service the queen and who, having done so, fall to the ground exhausted and dying. 

 

In other words, drones are literally fucked to death by the queen and the congregation area is both an orgy zone and a killing field. 

 

Providing the weather remains fine, the queen may return to this area for several days until she feels herself to be sexually satisfied and full of sperm [3]. Then she is ready to start laying self-fertilised eggs at the rate of about 1,500 a day, whilst worker bees surround her and see to her every need (feeding her, disposing of her excrement, etc.).            

 

 

II.

 

So, the question - aimed primarily to heterosexual males amongst my readership - is this: Would you fuck a queen bee were she to assume human form? 

 

It's a question that was posed by my favourite episode of The Outer Limits: ZZZZZ; an episode in which a queen bee, having metamorphosed into a woman, attempts to seduce an entomologist in order to advance her species [4].

   

And why not, indeed? For as the narrator of the episode says: 

'Human life strives ceaselessly to perfect itself, to gain ascendancy. But what of the lower forms of life? Is it not possible that they, too, are conducting experiments and are at this moment on the threshold of deadly success?'

 

Leaving aside the anthropocentric conceit expressed here, let's provisionally grant that other species apart from man are conducting experiments in evolution and (unconsciously) striving for growth and greater complexity in order to gain an advantage over those against whom they compete for resources. 

 

And this is probably as true for bees as for any other species; for what is a bee, after all, but an evolved form of ancient wasp? [5] So, let's suspend our disbelief and experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to the outer limits ...

III.

In the episode under discussion, Dr Benedict Fields (played by Philip Abbott) takes on a new lab assistant; a beautiful, but somewhat odd young woman called Regina (played by Joanna Frank). Inventing a hard luck story, she is provided with room and board by the kindly (but boring) entomologist and his wife Francesca (played by Marsha Hunt). 

 

Fields is conducting research into the language of bees and hoping he might find some way to communicate with them. Regina is excited by the prospect - though not half as excited as she is by the mating habits of bees and the willingness of drones to sacrifice themselves in the act of love.

 

Despite being happily married - and old enough to be her father - Fields is clearly attracted to Regina. This naturally causes a certain amount of resentment in Francesca, although her suspicions of the younger woman are not simply the result of jealousy; she knows there is something queer or not-quite-right about her. 

 

This is confirmed when one night she watches Regina from her bedroom window dancing about in the garden from flower to flower and then momentarily morphing into a giant bee whilst licking nectar from a water lily. Of course, this is dismissed as a nightmare by her husband. 

 

Later, however, when Francesca finally confronts Regina, the latter releases the bees kept in the lab and encourages them to kill Francesca. Grief-stricken, but finally aware of Regina's true nature and purpose, Fields rejects her sexual advances and gives her a moral lecture on the eternal character of love between a man and his wife. 

 

Frightened that he is about to swat her, Regina backs away and accidently topples from the bedroom window to the ground below. The shock of the fall triggers a transformation back into her insect-self and she buzzes off into the night, presumably returning to the hive, or perhaps to die alone in some quiet spot, having failed in her mission to mate with a human.   

 

The closing narration reiterates the moral of the episode, just in case any viewers missed it:

 

'When the yearning to gain ascendancy takes the form of a soulless, loveless struggle, the contest must end in unlovely defeat. For without love, drones can never be men, and men can only be drones.'

 

 

IV. 

 

I have to say, if I were in the good doctor's shoes, I'm not certain I'd've been able to resist Regina's sexual allure and physical beauty; here was a woman not just with bee-stung lips, but a bee-stung body! And surely, as an entomologist, one would have a professional obligation to experience the unique (if deadly and perverse) form of interspecies experience being offered ...?

 

What I'm trying to say is that, in my view, Joanna Frank as Regina could turn any man into a melissophile ...

  

Notes

 

[1] All bee larvae are given a taste of royal jelly in their first few days, but only those destined to become queens are fed this exclusively; the others must make do with a mixture of nectar and pollen known as bee bread. 

 

[2] Unlike worker bees, the queen's stinger is not barbed and so she is able to sting (and kill) repeatedly without causing fatal injury to herself.

 

[3] A young queen stores sperm from multiple drones in her spermatheca, from where she will selectively release sperm for the remaining years of her life in order to fertilise her eggs. 

 

[4] I'm referring to episode 18 of season 1, entitled 'ZZZZZ', dir. by John Brahm and written by Meyer Dolinsky, which first aired on ABC in January 1964. The episode can be watched in full on the Daily Motion website: click here.   

 

[5] Bees evolved from ancient predatory wasps that lived 120 million years ago. Like bees, these wasps built nests and gathered food for their offspring, but while most bees feed on nectar and pollen, their wasp ancestors hunted other insects. 

      Whether this makes the former more perfect versions of the latter is of course highly debatable. As far as I understand it, natural selection is a process that facilitates adaptations to an evironment, thus improving the chances of survival, but there is no intelligent design at work and evolution isn't progressive (unless one happens to subscribe to an orthogenetic model of the latter).      

 

 

How Playing the Part of a Real Troublemaker Secured Roadent His Place in the Pop Cultural Imagination

Roadent in 1977

 

Everyone (of a certain age) will remember the haunting hit single by The Passions, 'I'm in Love With a German Film Star' [1]. 

 

But not everyone will know that the object of Barbara Gogan's desire - whom she once saw in the corner of a bar trying not to pose - was neither German, nor, to be honest, a film star [2]; it was, rather, Stephen Conolly, aka Roadent, an English punk rocker, famed for his association with the Sex Pistols and the Clash. 

 

For me, Roadent is one of those somewhat shadowy and almost legendary figures from back in the day; someone who, to a large extent, is now of more interest than the (surviving) members of the bands whom he once assisted; and someone who, by playing the part of a real troublemaker, has secured his place in the pop cultural imagination.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The Passions were a post-punk band from West London, fronted by the Dublin-born songstress Barbara Gogan. The single 'I'm in Love With a German Film Star' was released in January 1981 on Polydor Records and reached the top 30 in the UK singles chart (which, for The Passions, was as good as it got). 

      Those who cannot recall the tune, or have never heard it, are invited to click here to play on YouTube. Or to watch a Top of the Pops performance, click here.  

[2] Having said that, it's true that Roadent has had minor roles in a couple of German films - including Brennende Langweile (dir. Wolfgang Büld, 1979) - and he also played the character of Joker in two episodes of the German TV series Das Ding (1978).   

  

On Crystal Skulls and Vitrified Brains

Figure 1: Crystal Skull in the collection of the British Museum [1]

Figure 2: Vitrified remains of a human brain [2]

 

I. 

 

It amazes me that even after the series five episode of Peep Show in which Mark smashes Cally's crystal skull with a brick, having only pretended to share her insane beliefs surrounding these objects in order to get her into bed [3], there are are still people who genuinely think these quartz carvings were crafted by the ancient inhabitants of Atlantis and possess magical powers of healing. 

 

Indeed, even claims of a pre-Columbian Mesoamerican origin have been refuted by those experts who have taken time to investigate them and it seems most likely the skulls were manufactured in the mid-late 19th century, almost certainly in Europe, in order to meet the growing demand for primitive artefacts (this includes the skull in the collection of the British Museum shown in figure 1 above).    

 

It's worth noting, finally - and contrary to popular fiction and New Age fantasy - that stories of crystal skulls possessing mystical properties and paranormal powers, do not feature in actual Mesoamerican mythologies. If you'd held one up to the Aztecs, they'd have laughed in your face (before then ripping your heart out).   

 

 

II.

 

Far more interesting than crystal skulls and their fake history, is the fact - recently brought to my attention by the artist and thanatologist Heide Hatry [4] - that the heat from the Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79 AD was so extreme that it literally turned brains into glass!

 

Who knew this was even possible? Blondie warn about the dangers of having a heart of glass [5], but I don't recall them saying anything about this.   

 

Vitrification, however, is a real process; one which results when material is burned at a very high temperature and then rapidly cooled and the shiny black matter extracted from inside the skull of one poor soul killed by the volcano is indeed the glassy remains of what had previously been squishy grey matter. 

 

Such a process is, apparently, extremely rare. Indeed, according to Dr Pierpaolo Petrone, a forensic anthropologist and the lead author of a recently published study of this topic [6], this case is the first ever discovery of an ancient human brain which has been vitrified.

 

Dr Petrone explains that the victim - found buried by volcanic ash - was probably killed instantly by the eruption and that the intense heat his body was exposed to ignited fat, vaporised soft tissue, and converted his brain into a glass-like substance. 

 

As Mark Corrigan might say: Thank you science, for providing us with this truly fascinating - if horrific - insight.     

 

Notes

 

[1] This and other images of the British Museum's Crystal Skull - along with full details - can be found on the BM website: click here. In brief, the BM purchased it from Tiffany and Co., in 1897, and they readily admit that it is not an authentic pre-Columbian artefact, but one made with modern tools, probably in Europe in the 19th-century.   

 

[2] Image source: The New England Journal of Medicine / Pierpaolo Petrone: click here.

[3] See the episode of Peep Show entitled 'Jeremy's Manager' (E5/S5), dir. Becky Martin, written by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, first broadcast on 30 May 2008. The full episode can be viewed on All 4 (the on demand service from Channel 4): click here (note you'll need to sign in or register first). Alternatively, the relevant scenes from the episode can be found on YouTube: click here and here.

[4] See the post dated 3 May 2022 on Heide Hatry's Icons in Ash Instagram account: click here.

 

[5] Blondie, 'Heart of Glass', a single release from the studio album Parallel Lines, (Chrysalis, 1978), written by Debbie Harry and Chris Stein. Click here for the official music video (dir. Stanley Dorfman). 

[6] Pierpaolo Petrone, M.D. (University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy), et al, 'Heat-Induced Brain Vitrification from the Vesuvius Eruption in C.E. 79', The New England Journal of Medicine, (Jan 23 2020): click here.

I Wish I Was Skiing (Fragment from the Dementia Diary)

Stan Laurel (c. 1920)

 

 

When you are living in exile and singlehandedly caring 24/7 for an elderly parent with dementia, then, trust me, all days are bad days [1].

 

But some days are worse than other days and feelings of entrapment, isolation, and violent frustration are overwhelming. Today is one such day. 

 

But, for some reason, at times like this, I always remember Stan Laurel on his death bed telling the nurse that he wished he was skiing: 

 

'Oh, I didn't know you could ski, Mr Laurel', she replied. 

 

To which Stan jokes: 'I can't - but doing anything would be better than this.'

 

Amazingly, thinking of this and of Stan's smiling face - or whistling Laurel and Hardy's cuckoo theme [2] - always manages to bring solace and make happy. 

 

It's not that the latter promises a better tomorrow; rather, it reminds one that in the grand scheme of things there is no grand scheme and life is patently absurd. Ultimately, we are all descendants of Sisyphus, forever pushing a giant rock uphill, or, in the case of Stan and Ollie, a piano up a long flight of steps.      

 

Notes 

[1] For an idea of what a typical day involves, click here. 

 

[2] Laurel and Hardy's cuckoo theme - entitled "Dance of The Cuckoos", was composed by Marvin Hatley. For Stan, the tune's melody represented Oliver Hardy's character  - pompous and dramatic - whilst the harmony represented his own character; somewhat out of key and only able to register two notes: Cu-coo. 

      The original theme, recorded by two clarinets in 1930, was re-recorded with a full orchestra in 1935. It was first used on the opening credits for Blotto (dir. James Parrott, 1930). A full version of Hatley's absurdist masterpiece can be played on YouTube by clicking here. 

 

 

May Day with D. H. Lawrence (1921 - 1929)

Claude Flight and Edith Lawrence Maypole Dance (1936)
goldmarkart.com 

 

 

1 May 1921 

 

Lawrence is back in Germany - staying at a country inn just outside Baden. 

 

He informs his American literary agent Robert Mountsier that it's lovely, although in a lettter written two days earlier, also to Mountsier, he confesses he doesn't really like Germany - even though things are cheap (always an important consideration for Lawrence). 

 

He expands upon this in a letter written the following day - May 2nd - to Mary Cannan, the actress wife of the British writer Gilbert Cannan: 

 

"The country is beautiful, Baden a lovely little town, and there are some exquisite things in the shops. Everybody is very nice with us: and we live for about 5/- a day the pair of us. Food is very good: wonderful asparagus." [1] 

 

And yet: "Germany is rather depressed and empty feeling [...] The men are very silent and dim." [2] 

 

To be fair, they had just lost a war and Germany had not fully recovered from the shock caused by the overthrow of the old way of life and the ongoing economic misery caused by the Treaty of Versailles's demand for punitive war reparations. 

 

Soon, however, the Nazis would be along, promising to address these issues ...

 

 

1 May 1923 

 

Two years later, and Lawrence is in Chapala, Mexico - which he describes in a telegram to Frieda as paradise (whether this is meant ironically or not, I don't know). 

 

She duly arrives from Mexico City the following day by train and they move into a little house of their own (near but not overlooking Lake Chapala): "It is hot and sunny and nice: lots of room." [3] 

 

They even have bananas growing in their garden - so much more exotic than the apples growing in mine! 

 

 

1 May 1925 

 

Many of Lawrence's short letters written from Del Monte Ranch, New Mexico, are full of relatively dull domestic details and conventional remarks about the weather and his state of health. 

 

And this includes his May Day letter to the American modernist painter (and early exponent of Cubism) Andrew Dasburg: thanks for sending a new ribbon for the typewriter; we've got the workmen in laying pipes; the cold winds cause my chest to play up, etc. [4] 

 

There's really not much one can say about this. But it's reassuring to know that Lawrence wasn't raging or in genius mode all of the time. 

 

 

1 May 1926 

 

Although Lawrence mockingly portrayed Reggie Turner as little Algie Constable in Aaron's Rod (1922), I will forever hold him in high regard due to the fact that he was one of the few friends who remained loyal to Oscar Wilde when he was imprisoned and supported him after his release.

 

On May Day, 1926, Lawrence wrote to Reggie from the pensione where he was staying, in Florence, hoping to clear up a misunderstanding. Apparently, they had agreed to meet at a popular bar, but, due to some confusion over the day, they managed to miss one another. 

 

Surprisingly, rather than be angry about this and blame Reggie, Lawrence sincerely regrets the lost evening and confesses that he was involved in a similar mix-up in Mexico City "with the one man I really liked in that damnable town: he said Thursday, and I heard Friday ... But anyhow I'm awfully sorry, and a thousand apologies" [5]. 

 

This is maybe explained by the fact that, as well as needing spectacles, Lawrence was a little deaf.

 

 

1 May 1928 

 

Harry Crosby, the young American playboy, poet, and publisher, epitomized the Lost Generation and would, in December 1929, commit suicide, aged 30, having first shot his young mistress, Josephine Rotch, through the head as part of an apparent death pact.

 

Twenty months earlier, however, in the spring of 1928, Lawrence had offered to write an introduction to a collection of poetry by Crosby and he sent this off to him at the beginning of May [6]. 

 

In a letter of April 29, Lawrence writes: "I have done the introduction to Chariot of the Sun [...] You can cut this introduction, and do what you like with it, for your book. If there is any part you don't like, omit it." [7] 

 

That's very generous of Lawrence; as was his proposal to promote Crosby's book by trying to get the introduction published separately; "a magazine article would be a bit of an advertisement for you" [8].

 

Just before Lawrence had the chance to post this letter, however, he received some further poems from Crosby in the mail. Unfortunately, he didn't think much of them - and in a PS written on May 1st, he advised Crosby not to add them to Chariot of the Sun:

 

"They don't belong; they are another thing. Put them in another book. Leave Chariot as it is. I send my foreword [...] It's good - but it won't fit if you introduce these new, long, unwieldly, not very sensitive poems. Do print Chariot as it stands. The new ones aren't so good." [9] 

 

 

1 May 1929

 

This would be Lawrence's final May Day; he was to die the following year on March 2nd. 

 

And he spent it in Spain (Palma de Mallorca): "Brilliant sunny May Day here, but wind cool - everything sparkling." [10]

 

In fact, he liked Mallorca so much he thought about staying the whole month and then do a little tour around Spain: Burgos, Granada, Cordoba, Seville, Madrid ..."I don't expect to like it immensely [...] Yet it interests me." [11]  

 

In fact, Lawrence had already decided the Spanish were rancid and lifeless: 

 

"The people seem to me rather dead, and they are ugly, and they have these non-existent bodies that English people often have [...] Dead-bodied people with rather ugly faces and a certain staleness. [...] The Spaniards, I believe, have refused life so long that life now refuses them [...]" [12]

 

Despite this, Lawrence lingered on in Palma until June 18th, when he finally sailed for Marseille (and from there headed by train to Italy).    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 710. 

      The May Day letter to Robert Mountsier is also on p. 710. 

 

[2] Letters, III. 711. 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, writing in a letter to Thomas Seltzer (2 May 1923), The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. IV, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 436. 

      The short May Day telegram to Frieda is on p. 435 of this volume. 

 

[4] See the letter to Andrew Dasburg (1 May 1925), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 248. 

 

[5] Letters, V. 445-46. 

 

[6] This introduction by Lawrence - entitled 'Chaos in Poetry' - can be found in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 107-116. It is one of my favourite pieces of writing by Lawrence and, I think, one of the most important. It was first published in Echanges, in December 1929.  

 

[7-8] D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton, with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cabridge University Press, 1991), p. 389.

[9] Letters VI. 390. 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Nancy Pearn (1 May 1929), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VII, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton, (Cabridge University Press, 1993), p. 269.

 

[11] Letter to Maria and Aldous Huxley [9 May 1929], Letters, VII. 276. 

[12] Letters, VII 275-76. 

      Lawrence is still denigrating the Spanish - whom he compares disavourably to both the Italians and the French - in another letter to Aldous Huxley written on the 17th of May [VII. 283]. Just for the record: I love Spain and I love the Spanish.

 

 

To read the first part of this post - May Day with D. H. Lawrence (1911 - 1917) - click here.

May Day with D. H. Lawrence (1911 - 1917)

Edith A. Cubitt: Children Dancing Round a Maypole (c. 1900) 

Watercolour drawing (commissioned by Ernest Nister)

vam.ac.uk

 

 

1 May 1911

 

After his advances to Agnes Holt in the autumn of 1909 had come to nothing - not even a handjob - Lawrence convinced Jessie Chambers to become his lover. 

 

In the two years that followed, finally free from the bonds of chastity, Lawrence actively pursued several women - or bed bunnies as he referred to them - in the hope of further sexual experience; "years of enforced virginity had given way to a kind of compulsive arousal" [1].

 

One of these women was the lovely Louie Burrows, to whom he wrote on May Day 1911:

"I would sell birthrights and deathrights for an embrace of thee, Louisa: toss 'em out of the window, poetic powers, perceptivity, intellect - pouf: for a few kisses and a tight clasp." [2]

 

 

1 May 1912 

 

Lawrence has now met and fallen in love with a woman whom he believes to be the most wonderful in all England. 

 

Unfortunately, Frieda Weekley is married with children. Still, that doesn't deter either of them from beginning an illicit affair and on May Day 1912 he writes a letter in which he expresses his anxiety and guilt - but also his commitment to the relationship - having arranged to effectively elope with her to Germany:

"I feel so horrid and helpless. [...] And what was decent yesterday will perhaps be frightfully indecent today. [...] 

      What time are you going to Germany, what day, what hour, which railway, which class? Do tell  me as soon as you can [...] I will come any time you tell me - but let me know.

      You must be in an insane whirl in your mind. I feel helpless and rudderless, a stupid scattered fool. [...] I would do anything on earth for you [...] but I don't like my feeling [of] presentiment. I am afraid of something low, like an eel which bites out of the mud, and hangs on with its teeth. I feel as if I can't breathe while we're in England." [3]

 

 

1 May 1913

 

Although he and Frieda are now an established item, Lawence is still thinking back to his (mostly sexless) relationship with Jessie - and doing so with increased bitterness. In a letter to Edward Garnett, he writes:

 

"It's all very well for Miss Chambers to be spiritual - perhaps she can bring it off - I can't. She bottled me up till I was going to burst. But as long as the cork sat tight (herself the cork) there was spiritual calm. When the cork was blown out, and Mr Lawrence foamed, Miriam said 'This yeastiness I disown: it was not so in my day.'" [4]  

 

It's always surprising how explicit Lawrence was with his sexual metaphors. Reading this, however, makes one wonder whether Jessie (or her fictional alias of Miriam) had a fear of semen and/or the act of ejaculation? In other words, was her intense disgust-response to male sexual activity rooted in a genuine phobia, or was it merely a consequence of her moral beliefs and idealism? 

 

Either way, this would explain (in part at least) why she was so bitterly ashamed of having allowed Lawrence to fuck her; it was as if he had "dragged her spiritual plumage in the mud" [5]. 

 

 

1 May 1915

 

American readers will probably know that William McKinley was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his assassination by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz in 1901 at the Pan-American Exposition held in Buffalo, New York.

 

English readers will probably ask: So what? 

 

Well, it turns out that Lawrence was fascinated by this event and much amused by a song (of anonymous origin) that was written about the shooting and Czolgosz's execution in the electric chair. On May 1st 1915, he enclosed the lyrics to the song in a letter to the English author Eleanor Farjeon (presumably at her request) [6]. 

 

 

1 May 1916 

 

In a letter to his Freudian friend Barbara Low - a founding member of the British Psychoanalytical Society - written from his cottage in Cornwall, Lawrence expresses his complete dismay with the world at war:

 

"I would write to you oftener, but this life of today so disgusts one, it leaves nothing to say. The war, the approaching conscription, the sense of complete paltriness and chaotic nastiness in life, really robs one of speech." [7]  

 

Of course, having said that, Lawrence then goes on (at some length) to speak of the local flora, his work on what he still at this time calls the second half of The Rainbow, and the current state of his health: "I was very well, but have been seedy again these few days ..." [8] 

 

But mostly he complains of the utter nausea he feels for humanity; "people smelling like bugs, endless masses of them, and no relief: it is so difficult to bear. [...] I feel I cannot touch humanity, even in thought, it is abhorrent to me." [9]. 

 

Still, it is from such nausea and violent anti-humanism that great art is born and the greater health discovered. For as Lawrence says: One sheds one's sickness in books.

 

 

1 May 1917

 

Today, of course, when we are all supposed to stand with Ukraine and wear a little blue and yellow ribbon or badge in solidarity, to say anything positive about Russia is almost taboo. But in May 1917 Russia was, for many people, the country that held out the greatest promise. 

 

And so it is that Lawrence writes to his Russian-born friend S. S. Koteliansky:

 

"I feel that our chiefest hope for the future is Russia. When I think of the young new country there, I love it inordinately. It is the place of hope. We must go, sooner or a little later. [...] Send me a Berlitz grammar book, I will begin to learn the language - religiously." [10]

 

Notes

 

[1] John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years 1885-1912, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 252.  

[2] D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 264. 

[3] Letters, I. 388-89. 

      It should be noted that this letter was actually written on April 30th, 1912, and not May 1st, but I'm using a little artistic and historical license for the sake of the post.

 

[4-5] Letters, I. 545. 

      This letter has been dated by the editor as 2 May 1913. It is mostly famous for the following boast made by Lawrence: "I know I can write bigger stuff than any man in England." [546]. 

[6] See The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 332.

[7-9] Letters, II. 602. 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 121. 

 

 

The second part of this post - May Day with D. H. Lawrence (1921 - 1929) - can be read by clicking here.